Crystal Gorge

by David Eddings

  “That’s not a bad idea, Tlantar,” Dahlaine said approvingly. “Oh, there’s one other thing you should know about. The outlanders make their weapons out of metal, not stone, and they’ll be bringing a lot of that metal with them when they come here. It may not be as pretty as stone, but there’s a little fellow called Rabbit who can turn arrowheads out by the hundreds in a single day. Spearheads are larger and heavier than arrowheads, but I don’t think that will mean anything to Rabbit and the other metalworkers. All that you and your men will have to provide will be the shafts, and then Rabbit and his friends will set up a ‘spear factory’ right there in the fort. I’d say that they’ll probably be able to make them faster than your men will be able to throw them.” He hesitated slightly. “Tell me, Tlantar, what’s your opinion of the archers of the Tonthakan Nation?”

  Tlantar shrugged. “Their arrows are probably good enough to kill deer, but I don’t think they’d work very well on bison.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be much of a problem, Tlantar,” Dahlaine said. “The bug-people we’ve seen in the ravine above Lattash are all smaller than a deer that’s only half grown, so Rabbit’s arrows in the hands of the Tonthakans will almost certainly kill most of our enemies. I’m almost positive that there are much larger bug-people, though, and that’s when your men—and their spears—will come in. Don’t waste your spears on the little ones. Save them for the big ones.”

  “As you desire, Dahlaine,” Tlantar replied without a smile.

  “You should try to get over that, Tlantar,” Dahlaine said sourly.

  “And maybe you should try it as well. You irritate people when you say obvious things to them. You did know that, didn’t you? I’ll send the southern tribes down into the woods that lie along your southern border to gather up spear-shafts so that we’ll be ready when the one called Rabbit arrives.”

  “There’s one other thing you should know about, Tlantar. The creatures of the Wasteland are venomous—much like certain snakes are. We don’t have venomous snakes this far to the north, so you might not quite realize just how deadly that venom can be. There’s an archer called Longbow down in my sister’s Domain who pokes his arrow points into the venom sacs of the dead enemies, and that makes his arrow points as deadly as the snake-fangs are. Over the years, he’s killed thousands and thousands of the bug-people by using their own venom.”

  “Now that’s the man I want to meet,” Tlantar declared.

  “You will, Tlantar,” Dahlaine replied. “He’ll be coming up here as well. He’s not doing it out of any affection for us, though. He’ll be coming here to kill more of the bug-people. He wants to kill them all. I’m not sure exactly why, but his hatred for the bug-people goes far beyond anything I’ve ever encountered before.”

  “Will he be coming north before much longer?” Tlantar asked.

  Dahlaine spread out his hands almost helplessly. “I have no way of knowing, Chief Two-Hands,” he replied. “Things are looking very positive in Zelana’s Domain—so far, at least—but we can’t even guess which direction the bug-people will decide to attack next. They could come this way, or go south, or maybe even east. We’ll have to wait until the Dreamers tell us where before we can make any decisions.”

  Dahlaine periodically returned to Mount Shrak and Asmie to keep Tlantar and the other Matan chieftains advised of the progress in his sister’s Domain. Tlantar liked Dahlaine, of course, since they’d been friends since Tlantar’s boyhood. Tlantar chose not to make an issue of it, but he definitely wished that Dahlaine would find a quieter way to travel.

  It was almost summer when Dahlaine briefly stopped by to advise Tlantar that the war in his sister’s Domain had come to a rather abrupt conclusion. “I think I might have underestimated the capabilities of the Dreamers, Tlantar,” he said in a troubled tone of voice.

  “Oh? What happened down there?”

  “The creatures of the Wasteland turned out to be burrowers, and they had tunnels running below the ground all over that ravine where the fighting was going on. Then, without any warning at all, my brother’s little boy blew the tops off of a couple of dormant volcanos at the head of the ravine, and a wave of molten rock came pouring down the ravine—and through all the burrows where the bug-people were hiding. I don’t think we’d have won that war without that Dream, but I go cold all over just thinking about it.”

  “How hot a fire does it take to melt rock?”

  “Probably about a thousand times hotter than any fire you’ve ever seen, Tlantar. The bug-people hiding in those burrows turned into puffs of smoke when the molten rock went boiling on down the ravine, and the little river that followed that ravine turned into steam, and it’s not there anymore. Has Ashad told you about his Dream?”

  “He’s been pretty much staying in your cave, Dahlaine. We don’t bother him when he’s in there—except to make sure that he’s got enough food.”

  “I appreciate that, Tlantar. Sometimes I forget that he has to eat real food. Anyway, the last time I came home, he told me that he’d been dreaming about my brother Veltan’s Domain, and it’s beginning to look like things are getting a bit more complicated. Ashad’s Dream strongly suggests that there’ll be two invasions of the South instead of just the one we met in Zelana’s Domain.”

  “Two different kinds of bugs, you mean?”

  Dahlaine shook his head. “The way Ashad described it, the second invasion involved people rather than bugs, and they came here to the Land of Dhrall in boats from somewhere off to the south of Veltan’s Domain. Anyway, Zelana offered more gold to the Maags if they’d sail on down to help the Trogites Veltan had hired to fight off the creatures of the Wasteland, and then she sent many of her own people on down there to help as well.”

  “Then it’s not very likely that we’ll be invaded before autumn, is it?” Tlantar asked. “That might work better for us here in the North. I’ve had the men of the various tribes practicing with their spear-throwers, but most of them can’t get the distance we’ll probably need. They’ll get better, I’m sure, but it’s going to take them a while. If we’re lucky, the war in the South will last longer than the other one did. I don’t think anything will move once the snow starts.”

  “We’ll see, Tlantar, but keep your men practicing—even after the snow flies. The better they get with their spear-throwers, the more chance we’ll all have of living long enough to see next summer.”

  4

  Dahlaine seldom returned to his Domain during the war in his brother’s part of the Land of Dhrall, and Tlantar had a distinct feeling that things were not going as well as Dahlaine had hoped they would, but along toward the end of summer Dahlaine came crashing home on his pet thunderbolt, and he seemed to be greatly relieved—but deeply puzzled at the same time. “We won the war in the South, Tlantar,” he said, “but I haven’t the faintest idea of how. Somebody—or, for all I know, some thing—stepped in when everything was starting to fall apart on us, and that whatever or whoever it was started to do things that I didn’t even understand. As Ashad’s dream had told us, there were two invasions, but what Longbow called ‘our unknown friend’ instructed us to just step aside. Then she—we’re all positive that ‘unknown friend’ is a woman—started to do some unbelievable things that pitted our two enemies against each other in what I’d call a war of mutual extinction. Then, just when things were starting to get interesting, she moved a geyser that’d been spouting from the same place for almost twenty-five thousand years about five miles to the north of its original home and swept away both of our enemies at the same time. Her geyser produced a lake that’s getting bigger every day and will permanently block off any possible new incursions into Veltan’s Domain by the creatures of the Wasteland. The way things stand right now, we’ve won two wars—or had them won for us—and we have no idea of which way the creatures of the Wasteland will come next. All we know for sure is that fire and water have blocked off the West and the South. We haven’t a clue about where the creatures of the Waste
land will come next or what we’ll use to stop them.”

  “Probably earth and air, Dahlaine,” Tlantar suggested. “There are only four elements, and we’ve got two that haven’t been used yet.”

  “Interesting notion,” Dahlaine said. “Anyway, we’ve split up the armies Zelana and Veltan hired. The Maags are coming here, and the Trogites are going east to protect sister Aracia’s Domain.”

  “Why not the other way around?” Tlantar asked curiously.

  “Maag ships move much faster than the Trogite ships can move, and this part of the Land of Dhrall is much farther away from Veltan’s Domain than Aracia’s is. There’ll be another fleet coming here a bit later, and that’s the one that’s going to bring the soldiers that I hired up here. I think just about everybody here—the Tonthakans, the Atazakans, and you Matans—are going to be very surprised when the Malavi get here. They have animals called horses that carry them to wherever they want to go, and the Malavi ride those animals into wars as well. Horses can run about four times faster than men can, so the Malavi strike fast and then fall back. Then they strike again. They cut their enemies all to pieces, and their enemies can’t even protect themselves, because the Malavi move so fast.”

  “I’m glad they’ll be on our side whenever the war comes here, Dahlaine,” Tlantar said fervently. “There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, though. How did you and your brother and sisters persuade these outlanders to come here and fight our wars for us?”

  Dahlaine shrugged. “We offered them gold, Tlantar, and the outlanders will do anything for gold.”

  “I’ve seen it a few times,” Tlantar said. “Isn’t it awfully soft to make tools from?”

  “The outlanders call it money, Tlantar, and they’ll do anything if you offer them enough of it.”

  “These outlanders are very strange, aren’t they?”

  “Indeed they are, Tlantar. They think that we’re the strange ones, though.”

  Autumn came just a bit later than was usual that year, and Tlantar ordered the tribes to the south of Asmie to continue practicing with their spear-throwers.

  Dahlaine had sent word that the outlanders known as the Maags had reached the Tonthakan Nation and that they’d soon be coming overland to Mount Shrak, and Tlantar’s curiosity about these strangers grew with every passing day.

  It was on a cloudy day in early autumn that a messenger from one of the northern Matan tribes came down to Mount Shrak, and he seemed to desperately want to speak with Dahlaine.

  “He’s over in the Tonthakan Nation right now,” Tlantar told the messenger. “I might be able to get word to him, but he can be just a little hard to find sometimes. What seems to be the problem?”

  “It goes quite a ways past ‘seems,’ Chief Two-Hands,” the messenger replied. “There’s been an outbreak of some kind of new disease up north, and it’s like no other disease we’ve ever seen. Our healers are baffled. I think that what bothers them the most is the speed of this particular ailment. A man can be perfectly healthy at breakfast, but he’s dead before lunchtime. Just about everybody up north is afraid to go near anybody else. They’ve started to go on out into the meadows and set up individual camps, and they threaten anybody who comes near their camp. The tribes are coming apart because nobody wants to have anything to do with anybody else.”

  “I’ll do what I can to get word of this to Dahlaine,” Tlantar said. Then he squinted at the messenger. “Have you been anywhere near any of the sick people?” he asked.

  The messenger shuddered. “I’ve got much better sense than that, Chief Two-Hands,” he said. “Up north, we don’t even talk to each other anymore. We yell instead, because nobody wants to get anywhere closer to anybody else than about a hundred paces. The only good thing about this particular ailment is that anybody who comes down with it doesn’t live long enough to pass it on to others. A solitary life makes a man sort of lonely, but lonely’s better than dead, wouldn’t you say?”

  The outlanders and what appeared to be most of the Tonthakan Nation arrived at Mount Shrak a couple days later, and Dahlaine came down to Asmie to speak with Tlantar. “The Maags and Tonthakans are getting along together fairly well,” he said. “I think we should let them get settled in before too many members of your tribe come up to the cave. Sometimes people who don’t know each other don’t get along too well right at first. I’ll need you there, of course, but let’s ease the others of your tribe into contact with the outlanders and Tonthakans rather slowly. Oh, there’s something else, too. Tell your womenfolk to avoid any contact with the Maags. The presence of women seems to bring out the worst in the Maags for some reason.”

  “That tends to crop up every so often, Dahlaine,” Tlantar said with a faint smile, taking up his spear and spear-thrower.

  “I think you should come back with me to my cave, though. There are several people I want you to meet, and you’ll need to explain the spear-thrower to them. They understand bows quite well, but most of them have never seen a bison up close, so I’m quite sure they won’t understand just exactly why you need such a heavy spear-point when you go to the hunt.”

  “I think my cloak might show them why,” Tlantar replied. “When they see how thick and shaggy bison hide is, they’ll probably understand why arrows are too light.”

  “Good point, Chief Two-Hands,” Dahlaine agreed. “Shall we go?”

  They went around the rocky base of Mount Shrak, and Tlantar was startled by how many outlanders and Tonthakan deer hunters were encamped on the broad plain stretching out from the foot of Dahlaine’s home. The camp seemed to go out for miles.

  There were several strangers gathered around the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave. Tlantar recognized the Tonthakans, of course, since they were all wearing their traditional deerskin shirts, but there were several others as well, and their clothes seemed more than a little peculiar. Tlantar was much more impressed by their size, however. These outlanders appeared to Tlantar to be perhaps the biggest people in the world.

  “This is Chief Tlantar of the Matakan Nation,” Dahlaine told the strangers. “Some of you may find his weapon of choice just a bit peculiar, but it was designed to kill a very large animal with thick skin and dense fur. When the creatures of the Wasteland attack us, some of them might have very thick skin—or even those protective shells that caused so much trouble down in Veltan’s Domain. I’m quite sure that the Matan spear will solve that problem—particularly if Captain Hook-Beak’s clever smith can make metal spearheads for the Matans.”

  Then Dahlaine introduced Tlantar to his beautiful sister Zelana and his youthful-looking brother Veltan.

  Then a burly outlander with a broken nose came up to Tlantar. “Have the bug-people been snooping around up here yet?” he asked.

  “Bug-people?” Tlantar asked.

  “Captain Hook-Beak has some very colorful names for the creatures of the Wasteland, Tlantar,” Dahlaine explained. “Some of them are so colorful that he doesn’t use them in the presence of my sister. The creatures of the Wasteland are descendants of a peculiar kind of insect, but the Vlagh has been modifying them to the point that they’re not really insects anymore.”

  “Ah,” Tlantar said. “If that’s what’s been happening, ‘bug-people’ sort of fits, I suppose.” He turned to the big-shouldered outlander. “We haven’t seen anything unusual down in the mountains, Captain Hook-Beak,” he said. “We don’t go down there very often, though. We hunt bison when we want meat, and the bison don’t go down there. They eat grass, and there isn’t very much grass in the mountains. I’ve asked the southern tribes to keep an eye on Crystal Gorge, but they tell me that they haven’t seen anything unusual down there so far.”

  “It’s probably too early, big brother,” Zelana said. “It’s a long, long way from Veltan’s Domain up here to yours, and the Vlagh probably had to wait for her most recent hatch to mature before they could start.”

  “We know that there have been a few of the servants of the Vlagh roaming around up here,”
Dahlaine said. “There were at least two of them tampering with the Reindeer Tribes over in Tonthakan—up until Ox chopped them down with his axe, of course.” Then he turned to Tlantar. “Have the members of any of the tribes here in southern Matakan been behaving peculiarly lately?” he asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard about,” Tlantar replied. “I don’t snoop around in the other tribes, though. Some of the tribes aren’t too happy about this ‘unification’ idea of yours, so I don’t go around beating them over the head with it. I just tell their chieftains what I want their tribes to do, and then I walk away. I think ‘unification’ is going to take several generations to settle in, so I try my best to avoid irritating—or offending—tribesmen who aren’t ready for it yet.”

  “This one’s a very good chief, Dahlaine,” a tall bleak-faced man wearing deerskin clothes said. “The clever ones know when to back away; it’s the silly ones who cause most of the trouble.”

  “I think you and Tlantar will get along very well, Longbow,” Dahlaine observed. “You’re very much alike.”

  “So you’re the one who came up with the idea of using parts of dead enemies to kill live ones,” Tlantar said to the bleak-faced man.

  The one called Longbow smiled faintly. “It wasn’t my idea originally, Chief Tlantar,” he replied. “The shaman of our tribe is called ‘One-Who-Heals,’ and he’s the one who showed me how to put the venom of dead ones on my arrow-points so that I could kill live ones faster.”

  “Longbow here can kill more bug-men by accident than whole armies can kill on purpose,” a small Maag declared, “and he got even better after I forged him metal arrowheads.”

  “Ah,” Tlantar said, “you’re the one Dahlaine told me about, then. He seems to think that metal spear-points might be better than the stone ones we’ve always used in the past.”

  Rabbit shrugged. “That’s what they’re paying me for,” he said. “I’ll need to see one of your spear-points before I set up shop, though. I’m quite sure that you’ll want the weight and size to be close to what your original stone points are.”